From a blogpost by PRSquared, More on the Menace of Marketing Measurement
In my previous posts, I have talked about how companies should always measure to determine the return on investment of their actions. I have written that company CEO’s will want to know this so they can know what to do and how to invest their money.
Yet, some experts, such as Katie Paine, have stated that measuring the ROI for blogs is a waste of time. She defends her statement by assuming that everyone already knows the power and the results of having a blog. Once you know that you need this certain technology, then it is a waste of time to measure because you already know the value of the blog. You know that the consequences of removing the blog far outweigh the benefits of keeping the blog up and running.
Shel Holtz responded to Katie Paine’s post in his own blog. He stated that people are caught up on the fact that return on investment relates to money. He says that we should look at it as a cost or a risk benefit analysis. Holtz counters Paine’s statement that measurement is a waste of time by saying that many executives fear the consequences and still do not understand the benefits of blogs yet. He feels that measurement is still needed at this time to keep proving to executives that blogs can create benefits for their company. Once CEOs see blogging as essential to their company, then measurement will not be required.
Windsor Media Enterprises responded to these postings, by Katie Paine and Shel Holtz, about the measurement of blogs. They tended to agree with Katie Paine. They said that the value of blogs is too intangible and is a waste of time to measure. They feel that as long as a few things, such as blogrolls, links, and comments, are included in your blog, you will receive those intangible returns. Also, to get these returns you need to connect your links, branding, and conversation. If you do these things, Windsor Media says that measurement is not required because you will already know the benefits.
Yet, measurement is still a needed skill to have whether you agree or disagree about measuring blogs. Katie Paine concludes that if you want a job in PR, you better make sure you have math and analytical skills for measuring.
March 27, 2009 at 8:12 pm
Hello Heather,
I agree with Shel Holtz that measuring money is not as important as measuring what he calls ‘cost (risk) benefit analysis.’
In the blog PR-Squared, a post talks about how determining ROI on social media marketing is complicated and can be considered a waste of time to figure out all the calculations. Everything I have read about measuring social media strategies is confusing because there is not an easy way to determine the effectiveness. Each company can measure page views or outcomes in sales, but sometimes just trying to provide good social media is the best you can do. Marketing and social media efforts are part of a cause and effect effort to improve the company, but do not always produce direct results. The difficulty behind measuring social media, as in the PR-Squared post, was “trying to put numeric quantities around human interactions and conversations, which are not quantifiable.” Social media efforts can be measured if there was a clear objective for the social media efforts in the beginning to track results. http://www.pr-squared.com/2008/11/roi_for_social_media_marketing.html
April 5, 2009 at 6:12 pm
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